


Anchored in Breathing

by Culumacilinte



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Love Confessions, Rough Sex, Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 16:26:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1824874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romana and Braxiatel, anticipating an end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchored in Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt, 'I love you... I’ve always loved you.' Brax/Romana

'Of  _course_  I love you, Braxiatel!’ 

The words wrenched themselves out of Romana, and Brax stilled, feeling as if he’d strayed onto suddenly thin ice. Romana sighed, and he could see in her the urge to deflate, felt and ignored in favour of stubborn fire.

'I have always loved you, for all the good it's done me. And frankly I've no idea how much of that you're to blame for and how much is my own natural inclination, but it hardly seems to matter at this point, does it?'

‘My lady,’ Brax started to interject, but Romana shook her head tiredly, dismissing him with a wave of one hand.

'And I know that you… care a great deal for me, however twisted have been your ways of expressing that, but I  _also_ , Braxiatel, I also trust that you know me well enough to know that I will not allow personal feelings to interfere with what must be done.’

'Romana,' he tried again, but Romana bowled ahead.

'No, shut up; I have something to say and I'm damned if I'm not going to get it out now.'

Obligingly, more than a little ruefully, Braxiatel subsided. When had he ever been able to restrain Romana? It would be a fool’s act to try. And now, her body grown gaunt and shaking, eyes bruised from stress and sleep deprivation, she was stronger than she had ever been.

'I have every expectation that I'm going to die soon,' she said with terrible matter-of-factness, almost impatience. 'Oh, I know, I've plenty of regenerations left, but if Rassilon has indeed returned and he succeeds in regaining power, I can't imagine he has any intention of allowing me to continue living. And I— whatever I feel for you, it is not enough for me to make a coward of myself and run. My life— Gallifrey is more important. Can you accept that?'

She was, Braxiatel thought, magnificent. She shook him with it. If she hadn’t asked him that question, he might have entertained plans of coshing her over the head and dragging her with him into his TARDIS and away from Gallifrey and the War, of saving their own skins so that they might retroactively engineer a solution to this whole mess; perhaps even inducing a regeneration so that he could mould her newborn psychology to assure she understood his viewpoint. But asked point blank, in the face of her feverish eyes and stupid nobility, he was quite, quite helpless.

'I can.'

Romana nearly swayed with relief, and gave him something like one of her old, ironic smiles. ‘Then, Brax, before I’m oublietted or whatever horrors inevitably await me, I would— very, very much like to be able to stop thinking for one night.’

The look she cast up at him was almost coy; for a moment, perversely, he could imagine it on the face of her first incarnation, and he stifled a smile. ‘It is my duty to serve my lady president.’

'Oh,  _Brax—_ ’

'And my pleasure, Romana, as a friend, to give you comfort in whatever small way I can.'

He could taste the unspoken  _thank you_ on her lips when he bent to kiss her.

Braxiatel  _ached_ to be gentle with her, but gentleness was not what Romana wanted, not now, not to start. So he used her roughly, tossed her legs carelessly over his shoulders, ploughing into her, fucking her so hard that each thrust lifted the small of her back from the bed, bending her nearly in half. And Romana arched and swore, clawing bloody stripes into his back, taking his head and forcing it to her breast, clenching around him and panting his name, her beautiful voice turned ugly with desperation.

After they’d both come, Romana too wrung out to protest, Braxiatel allowed himself some of that gentleness, sliding down to bury his face between her legs. He kissed her cunt with near reverential softness, finding her clitoris with his tongue and coaxing her up from the plateau of her orgasm into another. 

He could hear her in his mind, the babble of her thoughts; all her gratitude and terror and exhaustion and pleasure, and he pushed his way in amongst it, almost shocked when she allowed him without comment. But he spent no time on shock; inside her mind, he gave her every sensory pleasure he could think of, every hedonist’s glory he had ever taken in the universe, whilst outside he licked and tongued and sucked, his hands clutching at her thighs, devoting all of his attention to her.

Romana came, and came again, and again, until even the babble of her thoughts had been silenced, swallowed by fizzing, bright pleasure like an ocean. She writhed and sobbed under him, words entirely gone, reduced for the moment to nothing more than nerve endings and skin.

When at last she could no longer even squirm and buck at the touch of his mouth, simply lie there at the mercy of the pleasure he was giving her, when her last orgasm came upon her with such force that she actually blacked out for a few seconds, Braxiatel finally withdrew.

His mouth and tongue were stiff and sore, and he was achingly hard again. Whilst she lay there, a puddle slowly coalescing back into a Time Lady, Braxiatel discreetly finished himself off into a handkerchief.

He studied her for some time, idly passing his fingertips over her quivering thigh, the too-sharp jut of her hipbone, until her eyes fluttered open. The smile she gave him was bone-tired, but more genuinely content than Brax could remember seeing in decades. His hearts, entirely without his consent, skipped several beats. Somewhere under them, in the hollow space under his ribcage, he felt suddenly the poignant pain of entropy.

'I'm not sure I can move, after that,' Romana murmured tiredly, and knowing that they would likely never speak of this again, that Romana might well be dead in a week, Braxiatel allowed himself to lay down next to her and gather her into his arms.

He closed his eyes and smiled a small smile into her hair. ‘Then I have done my job, my lady.’


End file.
